


The Merman and The Moon

by 912luvjaxlean



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Episode: s02e03 Dead Man's Chest, F/M, June 2018, The Power of the Feminine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 13:49:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14916534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/912luvjaxlean/pseuds/912luvjaxlean
Summary: Midnight, after Jack has been visiting in Phryne's boudoir.





	The Merman and The Moon

What shade of blue is the ocean? What color of blue is the moon?

Blue penetrates. Blue reposes. Serious depths. Water wet, welcome. The wild within the beats of the heart, the rhythm and the motion. If an ocean is pacific blue, this bay is more a silver-gray. Time and tide, calm or stormy. When Triton sounds, the conch shell summons. Upon a midnight beach, a man sheds his outer skin. Swim, swimmer, swim. No longer immured.

Moonlight haze, blue hue. Smoky mist, velvet sky, stars shy.  Midnight saturated with moisture, not rain, not fog. A path appears upon the water. It arrows into unknown space. Neither sky nor water, neither past nor present, just liquid time.

Diana the Huntress, goddess of the moon, controls a woman’s cycles and secrets. Of tides and times, of moisture, of red, of birth and death. When the power of the feminine awakens, you must come on. No longer asleep.

The moisture in the air touched her body and lay upon her like a lover. She became aware of dampness between her legs. Her lovely caressing dream dissipated and disappeared. Reality required an absorbent item to confine the flow. She rose to take care of the need.

She felt enclosed in that sad house in Queenscliff. She recalled visits her Aunt Prudence once made to visit her girlhood friend. All those younger past times past, days of promise. Now a tragic melancholy controlled the house. It seemed to surround her.

She was glad that Jack had visited in her boudoir. He had even poured champagne for her in that temperance household. It was very cozy and comfortable and strangely familiar. As though they had spent times before, visiting in her private room, talking, discussing, planning.

I could be in danger here, was her thought, when he removed his suitcoat and sat on the edge of the settee in his shirtsleeves. Shocking behavior for a buttoned-down man. I could be in danger here, because I could love him.

But, I don’t choose to settle on just one when there is a world of men out there. Varied, attractive, charming, exotic, dangerous, sensual. Men. Not man. Still, Jack in his shirt sleeves…Jack drinking hot tea while he poured her champagne…Jack calling her ‘my darling’…oh well, that was what he read from the engraving. Still.

So very staid and proper. And, of course he didn’t stay, when she suggested it.  ‘That would be inappropriate, Miss Fisher.’ Always doing the right thing, the expected thing. Not varying, not coloring outside the lines, not using a purple crayon for a horse, or magenta for trees. No, Jack Robinson would use black and white, a grey scale, a ledger page, an accounting, a serious man. Always.

She couldn’t sleep. And, it was such a mild night. A whispered invitation called from the strand. No ghosts lingered. She would walk to the other side of the pier and return. She felt no fear. Just a lingering dissatisfaction. There was an undeniable attraction between the two of them, a pulse and a pull, a desire, even need. And, no way past Jack’s inability to leave his cage.

She recalled a traveling menagerie she had once seen. She asked about a certain creature’s unlocked cage. The animal trainer had said: It comes to the edge of the open door and then retreats. It’s afraid of what’s on the other side. It knows what’s in the pen. It feels safer shut in.

And, that was Jack. Confined by traditional values, monogamy, duty, and service. Responsible Jack. Honorable, hard working. She respected and admired him. But, he was trapped within his sense of propriety. He was comfortable in his enclosure.

As she walked, she heard a rhythmic splashing coming from the sea. Someone swimming in the pale blue cast of moonlight. Light and shadow. A mysterious murmur of sea, sand and sorrow. The pulsing of her curiosity. The thrum of her need to know. The caution to remain hidden, to hunt and spy. Ah! Just there. A solitary swimmer returning to shore. A merman?

He left the caress of the buoyant sea and returned to the imprisoning land. A man with strong muscular thighs, developed calves, narrow waist, broad shoulders, and firm buttocks. No fins, though, just lean muscles and a slender physique.

Perhaps a chance encounter? To stroll up and see if he needed a lady’s hand? But, no. There was something about how her merman kept gazing out upon the sea. Something that spoke to her of love and loss and longing. Something about need. Something about being trapped between the elements of shore and sea.

A creature of dream and water standing all alone upon the strand. Slowly turning back to the reality of land. An unlikely consort for a moon goddess. She of air, of sky, of liberality, winging away and flying free. And, he a creature of both solid earth and liquidity, caught somewhere in-between

Yet, as dignified as a man wearing an invisible three-piece suit, overcoat and fedora, he strode towards a bathing box in the shadowy distance. As naked as mother ocean made him.

Perhaps he knew more about open cage doors than she had ever fathomed.


End file.
